A large number of batch jobs are executed on large-scale systems. A batch job refers to processing of data in a group at once. For example, batch jobs include jobs that are performed at once every predetermined period, such as a daily sales calculation process. Batch jobs are typically processed in accordance with programs or scripts. There are various types of sequence relation between batch jobs, and in many cases batch jobs interact with each other. For example, there are cases where a sales calculation process is started after an order finalization process is finished. There are also cases where when batch job A outputs file C, batch job B on standby starts processing of the file C.
However, the sequence relation between batch jobs cannot be checked easily in some cases. For example, if batch job B is started in response to a message outputted upon execution of a program for batch job A, the sequence relation between the batch jobs cannot be identified unless the program is analyzed. Also, recently many business mergers have been taking place, and such mergers are also accompanied by integration of a plurality of systems. If developers and administrators are different in such cases, situations can arise where desired batch sequence relation defining information cannot be accessed.
A technique called process mining is known. Process mining refers to a technique for estimating how tasks are connected from a set of the results (e.g. logs) of execution sequence of tasks in business processes. Specifically, process mining uses an α-algorithm, its improved algorithm, a genetic algorithm, or the like. However, since most process mining techniques assume business processes executed by humans, the underlying assumption is that each single process includes only several to a dozen or so tasks at most. Therefore, if the number of tasks per process increases, the computational complexity significantly increases. For example, it is known that for algorithms with good accuracy (e.g. α++ algorithm), the computational complexity increases exponentially. In other words, it is difficult to obtain results within a reasonable time.